Abbey is campaigning with Mind after attempting to take her own life (Image: Mind)
Three years after she was sectioned for trying to jump off a bridge, a mental health campaigner is battling to make life better for others. Twenty-five-year-old Abbey spent several hours in the back of a police van after her suicide attempt and she says she overheard the officers making jokes about her. She was then taken to A&E, where she was stuck in a room with one officer who she says was watching videos on his phone.
And then she says she was traumatised as several male medical staff wanted to assess her at the same time. Abbey, from Manchester, said: “I was treated more like a criminal than somebody in crisis, and I think that’s the experience of a lot of people that are sectioned under the Mental Health Act.”
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The Mind exhibition took place in the Houses of Parliament (Image: Getty)
She said: “They are treated like a criminal and just treated like a nuisance, that they’re just there to cause trouble and are attention seeking.
“I think it’s important to talk about the issues with mental health services and how they’re not adequate to help people at the moment.
“When I was taken from the bridge I understood the need to be sectioned because I was a risk to myself.
“[But] I don’t think it was right to leave me for hours alone in the back of a police van without anybody to talk to.
“Nobody would even check on me or ask if I was okay. I think all I wanted was someone to talk to, talk to me, and listen to me because, at that point, I’d tried to attempt to end my own life a few times.”
how are you feeling? – a poem by Abbey
how am i feeing? tired. really, f***ing tired.
i’m tired of waking up every morning, the dread of opening my eyes and the thought of reliving another day of meaningless existence playing heavy on my mind until the sounds of birds singing and the world arising rolls around.
i’m tired of the sun shining so bright into me, when all i want to do is sink into my sins and let the darkness envelop me.
i’m tired of the morbid planning, finding an escape route to life at every place i go. i want so badly for a tsunami of thoughts to drown me and wash me ashore on the beach of some faraway land.
i’m tired of being called strong when i’ve never felt so weak in my entire life i’m so f***ing tired
“I’m okay”
She said: “All I wanted was just someone to listen to me rather than just talk about me like I was a nuisance and just hand me off to another mental health services, and I’d just fall through the cracks with them.
“[In the police van] I felt really, really low and I was just wishing that the attempt had worked and I wasn’t there to listen [to the police] because I just felt, like, even more burdened on everyone else around me at that point.
“The police saying all that stuff didn’t help me at all.
“From the time I was sectioned, like, detained, it was, I think it took around 13 hours to be assessed.
“When I eventually spoke to a doctor one-on-one, I told him I really wanted to get help this time. I really wanted to get help this time. I wanted to try and get better.”
Abbey now campaigns with the mental health charity Mind to raise awareness of issues with the Mental Health Act.
She said: “I wish emergency services staff and those in hospitals were there to listen, asking suicidal people what they want rather than telling them what’s going to happen.
“I know they see people in mental health crisis all the time, but I think that a lot of them forget that these [suicidal] people have their own feelings, they’ve got their own trauma, and I think it’s easy to just brush past it as just another part of the job when it’s actually someone’s, like, life in their hands.
“I want people to have more of a say in what happens to them after they are sectioned by police. They have been essentially arrested in a way because you can’t leave the police officer’s side.
“I just want people to have more rights and feel safer, so they don’t feel like something bad has happened to them.
“And I think the waiting time in general to be seen in hospital, especially for mental health crises, is probably the worst it’s been in years.”
She wrote a poem around the time she was sectioned, and it was put on display at a recent exhibition by Mind in the Houses of Parliament for politicians to learn about firsthand accounts of people affected by the Mental Health Act.
Minesh Patel, associate director of policy and campaigns at Mind, said: “Abbey’s experiences show why we so desperately need to raise the standard of mental health hospitals, and reform the Mental Health Act to make it fit for purpose.
“The Mental Health Bill has some positive changes, like the removal of police and prison cells as so-called ‘places of safety’ for people under section, but we need MPs to go further and be truly bold and ambitious in shaping the legislation.
“Abbey’s poem, ‘how are you feeling?’, is a stark reminder of how badly too many of the 54,000 people sectioned each year are being let down. When people don’t get the help they need, it can have lifelong consequences.
“That’s why it’s so important to make mental health inpatient care a space of recovery, not trauma. Mind won’t stop fighting until everyone with a mental health problem gets the respect and help they deserve.”
The Samaritans can be reached round the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you need a response immediately, it’s best to call them on the phone. You can reach them by calling 116 123, by emailing [email protected] or by visiting www.samaritans.org.
